


i wish we never met

by drizzly_bear



Series: lie to me [1]
Category: The Prom - Sklar/Beguelin/Martin
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/F, Post-Canon, Rated T for angst, Sad, Sad Ending, Songfic, Underage Drinking, i forgot the drinking age in america is 21
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 14:43:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18606628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drizzly_bear/pseuds/drizzly_bear
Summary: Separated by college, Emma and Alyssa haven't seen each other for months. So on Alyssa's flight to a law scholarship at Oxford, she stops over in New York City for a night, to see Emma.inspired by 'Lie To Me' by 5 Seconds of Summer for the prom discord's songfic challenge





	i wish we never met

**Author's Note:**

> kinda struggled writing this bc angst is not my forte and i've never really done a songfic or a challenge before, but i hope i did okay!

This is what she remembers: the blurred glow of bright city lights, the cloying taste of alcohol, the sound of a throbbing bass.

_flashing back to new york city  
changing flights so you stay with me_

The lights of New York City shine like a beacon that Alyssa sees from above, from the taxi, from the street.

She looks out the small round window of the plane and she smiles. The city stretches out on all sides around the aircraft, buildings like little glowing dots surrounded by the shining arteries of the streets. It is so much bigger than Edgewater, or even Indianapolis. This is her first visit to The City That Never Sleeps. True to the name, it is late, yet people are everywhere – as the plane draws closer, Alyssa can see cars and buses scurrying along the streets like ants. It is wonderful. She cannot stop smiling as she presses her fingers against the cool window, reaching toward the city below.

It has been months since Alyssa saw Emma last. Months since prom, since graduation, since college started. Months of increased pauses between replies to her texts, months of growing silence during their video calls, months of a creeping feeling that Emma was slowly and inexorably slipping away.

But here, at last, is Alyssa’s chance to bridge the gap. An illustrious scholarship, a flight halfway across the world, and a stopover – a single night – where Emma is.

The airport is huge and busy, and almost overwhelming for a small town girl such as Alyssa, but she manages, and she pays a small fee to leave her suitcase in the airport storage. Perhaps she should have taken it as a sign when Emma couldn’t meet her at the airport. Instead, Emma texts her an address, and Alyssa gets in a taxi. She leans back and stares out the window during the journey.

It has just rained, and the clouds are glowing orange as the city lights reflect off their bottoms. The glass of the taxi window is drizzled over with the remnants of raindrops, shattering the sparkling lights into fragments. The world outside is a bright blur.

Alyssa finds herself feeling inexplicably nervous as the taxi draws to a stop, and squints through the window at the smudge of pink neon sign on the building outside. She doesn’t know where she is, only that this is the address Emma sent her. She pays the driver, and exits.

_I’m here_ , she texts Emma, but there’s no reply. Alyssa taps her phone on her palm as she waits, bubbles of anxiety fizzing through her.

Then she sees a familiar blond head pushing open a dark door, and Emma beckons her over. Alyssa runs to close the last few steps between them and throws her arms around Emma, who returns the hug briefly, before stepping back and tugging Alyssa into the doorway after her.

The inside is dimly lit, and Alyssa hears muffled noise – loud music mixed with the sounds of people, the sounds of a party.

“Come on,” Emma says, pulling Alyssa up a dark flight of stairs. Their feet thump on the carpet as they ascend. “The party’s up here.”

Party? Alyssa is confused, and a little lost, but she says nothing. She strains her eyes through the darkness to try to see Emma’s face, but she can’t.

At the top of the stairs, Emma pushes a door open, and the music hits Alyssa in the face. Lights flash in their faces and Alyssa sees Emma’s face lit up in kaleidoscope colors, reflecting off her glasses. The center of the room is a seething mass of bodies, dancing to the beat. Alyssa cringes internally. Despite being one of the so-called popular kids at James Madison, she had never really liked parties.

Emma wends her way through the crowd to a tall counter and grabs drinks, Alyssa trailing behind her. Alyssa follows Emma back through the crowd to a pair of chairs against a wall. They sit, and Emma pushes the plastic cup toward her. Alyssa doesn’t touch it. She doesn’t really drink, and Emma knew that. Knows that.

“So what do you think?” Emma asks, smiling expectantly. Alyssa has to lean forward to hear her over the noise.

“I missed you.” Alyssa tries to filter some of the longing out of her voice. Emma doesn’t seem to have missed her. Here she was, at a party, during the one night Alyssa had here.

“I missed you too.” Emma’s response is automatic, and Alyssa finds herself searching Emma’s eyes to discern her feelings. She can’t. The lights and music are distracting, and she can’t see Emma’s eyes clearly enough.

Alyssa casts about for something to talk about. “How have you been?” She’d thought everything would be simple once they saw each other again – that everything would fall into place like it always had. But this? This was hard. This was awkward.

Emma smiles again, and Alyssa can’t help but smile in return. Emma’s smile had always been infectious. “I’m good,” Emma says, and Alyssa believes her. She sounds happy. “Really good. There are so many people like me here. It’s everything I’d ever imagined it would be.”

Alyssa is happy for her, she really is. But something doesn’t feel right. “That’s wonderful,” she says as warmly as she can, clasping Emma’s hand with her own.

Emma doesn’t respond to her touch, but doesn’t push her hand away either. Alarm bells ring faintly in the back of Alyssa’s head. She ignores them. “And you?” Emma sounds earnest.

“A little nervous,” Alyssa laughs, releasing some of her pent-up tension.

“I would be too.” Emma’s eyes are sympathetic, her voice kind. “England, huh? That’s really impressive.”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m going. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go all that way, but Oxford isn’t something you just pass up, you know?” Alyssa spreads her hands as she speaks.

“Valid,” Emma says. “You deserve it. Of course Alyssa Greene gets the grand scholarship to Britain.”

Alyssa laughs again, but there’s an edge to it. “Well, it’s not an ‘Alyssa Greene’ thing,” she says, making the air quotes with her fingers. “It’s something that I actually want to do, I think. For me. Alyssa.”

“But your mom is proud,” Emma fills in. “Right?”

Alyssa looks down, her fingers twisting a strand of hair. “Right,” she says quietly. “She is.” Accepting the law scholarship had been a difficult decision. Alyssa knows it’s what she wants to do. It’s just that she’s not sure if it’s what she wants because her mother would want it, or because she wanted it. And it was so far away. “How are things with your parents?” she asks tentatively.

Emma’s face turns flat, her eyes as hard as agates. “Nothing new. I don’t need them, though.”

“And Betsy?” Alyssa says, hoping to shift the conversation back onto friendlier topics.

Emma softens. “She’s the same. You know, teaming up with Barry to make my life miserable.” She looks amused, though, as they share a laugh.

The song changes, and Emma turns her head to face the dance floor, swinging her legs and tapping her feet against the chair legs. Alyssa crosses her legs at the ankles and watches her.

“You want to dance?” Emma asks.

“Not really,” Alyssa says, hoping that Emma will stay here and talk to her, or even better, go somewhere else with her. She gives Emma the option anyways, seeing her glance toward the dance floor. “But you go ahead.”

Emma smiles at her and sculls her drink, leaving the empty cup behind. Alyssa watches her back as she melts into the crowd. It stings, and Alyssa feels a vague sense of betrayal, but she pushes the uncharitable feeling away.

_i caught you looking too  
but you didn’t look twice_

The punch Alyssa sips leaves a sickly-sweet aftertaste in her mouth.

She watches Emma dancing from her perch at the side of the room. Alyssa’s catches Emma’s eye, and smiles at her. Emma grins a lightning-flash grin back at her. There and gone.

Emma has always been beautiful, has always shone brightly, but now she burns incandescently from within. Alyssa used to wonder how she’d been the only one to see the light shining from Emma, but now it’s obvious that others can see it too. People turn toward Emma and smile, touch her warmly on the shoulder, exchange a few words. A dark-haired girl dances closer to her, and Emma turns to face her. Alyssa sees their lips move, but can’t work out what they’re saying.

Emma looks happy. She fits right in here, in this crowd of pixie cuts and flannel shirts.

Where in Indiana, being different, being a lesbian, had made Emma an outcast; here in New York City, Emma had clearly found a community where her differences were accepted, where being a lesbian was celebrated.

Good for her.

But Alyssa can barely recognize the Emma she knows and loves in this dancing girl. This Emma is wild and cool and confident. This Emma wants to spend the night partying, drinking and dancing and talking to people Alyssa doesn’t know and who Emma hasn’t introduced her to. The Emma she’d known was perfectly happy to curl up next to Alyssa in bed and spend the night watching television. This Emma isn’t an Emma she knows. Alyssa isn’t sure that this Emma is an Emma she wants to know. But this Emma isn’t an Emma Alyssa wants to lose, either. No matter how far away they were from each other. Because Emma, because Emma and Alyssa together, Emma and Alyssa in love, is worth it.

Emma and the dark-haired girl are dancing together now. They make an excellent pair, both tossing their hair, throwing their heads back and laughing. Even from the side of the room, Alyssa can see Emma’s eyes sparkling like gems, lighting up her face. She wants Emma to look at her like that.

She sips at the drink again. Is it punch? It tastes fruity, but fake. Whatever it is, it burns a trail down Alyssa throat, and she makes a face. She puts the unfinished drink down next to her, and a hand immediately whisks it away as a tall girl takes its place.

Alyssa doesn’t divert her gaze from Emma, and the girl leans over to see where she was staring.

“Friend of Emma’s?” she asks, not quite sounding like she cared.

“Yes. Alyssa.” She turns to face the other girl, wondering if she’ll recognize the name.

The girl is nonchalant, giving nothing away. “Robin. I’ve got a couple classes with Emma.”

“I know Emma from high school,” Alyssa offers, and Robin nods disinterestedly. Has Emma not mentioned her to anyone? Alyssa shifts back to watching the dance floor, and sees Robin do the same out the corner of her eye.

“She’s cute, isn’t she?” Robin startles her with the question.

“Who, Emma?” Alyssa finds it odd to talk about Emma like this. She isn’t used to discussing Emma with other people, or even to discussing girls with other people.

“Yep.”

On the floor, the dark-haired girl grabs Emma’s hand and spins Emma under their linked arms. Alyssa sees Emma’s laughing face as she twirls pasts, and her mouth twists into a bitter smile.

Beside her, Robin sighs. “Looks like those two might be a thing, though.”

“You think so?” Alyssa looks at her sharply.

“I mean, who knows?” Robin shrugs.

Alyssa keeps watching Emma, eyes inevitably drawn to her, like a moth spiraling toward a flame. Eventually, she senses Robin get up and walk away.

Alyssa waits for Emma to look over, to see her, to walk over and hold her hand and lead her out.

Emma doesn’t.

_and i know that you don’t  
but if i ask you if you love me_

The loud bass thrumming from the other room is audible, humming in Alyssa’s bones, harmonizing with the thump-thumping of Alyssa’s heartbeat.

Alyssa faces Emma across the cold kitchen tiles. “What’s up?” Emma’s voice is bright. Her hair is disheveled, her smile crooked, and Alyssa wants nothing more than to rush into her arms and kiss her. Instead, Alyssa crosses her arms in front of her chest. 

“Can we talk?” Alyssa tries to keep her voice light, tries to hide the pounding of her pulse.

“Sure.” Emma frowns faintly. Alyssa is used to being able to read Emma’s face at a glance, but this new Emma is complicated. Inscrutable.

“Who is that girl?” Alyssa’s voice sounds tight in her ears, and she forces herself to relax.

At Emma’s puzzled look, Alyssa clarifies. “The girl you were dancing with.”

“Eve?” Emma says, looking unsure of where Alyssa is heading with this line of questioning. “She’s a friend.”

A friend. Alyssa believes that. She has to. She’s being paranoid. It’s almost worse, though. If Eve is just a friend, then what is Alyssa to Emma? Alyssa can’t forget the way Emma looked out there – so alive, so incandescently joyful. Here, standing in front of Alyssa in the blank kitchen light, Emma is pale and quiet and dull.

“Does anyone here know about us? That I’m your girlfriend?”

Emma’s eyes dart to the side. “Not really?” she hedges. “It hasn’t come up.”

There is a beat, a beat that stretches out into a pause, which lengthens into a silence.

Alyssa is the one who breaks it. She needs to know. Something has felt wrong, felt off, for months now, and feels even worse tonight. “Emma, what is this? What are we?”

Emma bristles defensively at that, intense green-brown eyes boring into Alyssa’s. “You know what we are.”

Alyssa feels helpless. So helpless. “Do I?”

There is another pause, and Alyssa struggles to put words out into the silence, past the deafening rush of blood pounding through her ears and the swoop of nausea in her stomach. “Do you love me?”

“Of course I do,” Emma says.

“Then say it.”

Which is better, a cruel truth or a kind lie?

It is a slight hesitation that gives her away. Emma’s eyes flicker to the ground before rising to meet Alyssa’s own. The new Emma may be hard to read, but she is and was and always will be a terrible liar. So Alyssa knows. Alyssa knows, even before Emma herself does. And when Emma answers, “I love you,” Alyssa’s hopes flicker out.

A kind lie. From Emma, a lie to protect Alyssa. And from Alyssa, a lie to set Emma free.

Alyssa responds in kind, feeling her heart crack within her chest. “I don’t think I feel the same.” So they match.

She smiles a comforting smile that touches only her face, masking the pain behind it.

Emma’s eyes are wide – whether in surprise, in hope, or something else, Alyssa can’t tell. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Alyssa shrugs uncomfortably, hoping that her inner turmoil doesn’t show. “I mean this isn’t working. And I’m moving even further away, so… it’s not going to get any better, is it?”

Emma takes a step back and thinks. Slowly, she says, “No. It isn’t.”

A tiny part of Alyssa had been holding on, hoping that Emma would fight for her. Would fight for them. But at Emma’s words, that tiny part of Alyssa crumbles away, falling into a yawning pit of darkness that is opening up in Alyssa’s chest.

A silence swirls between them, a silence by far worse than any previous one. It is spiky with thoughts and emotions both spoken and unspoken. Alyssa feels cold and hot simultaneously, like someone’s set fire to her insides.  

“So what do we do?” Emma kicks at the ground with the toe of her sneaker. “Do we break up?”

Alyssa swallows, and forces the words past the lump in her throat. “Yeah. I guess so.”

Her eyes search Emma’s face, etching her hazel eyes, her soft lips, her smooth cheeks, her dark eyelashes, her unruly hair into her memory. She remembers how this feels. She remembers the feeling of invisible flames licking up her sides and consuming her from within. She remembers feeling disconnected from the blurry lines of her body, the only clear point in the world the girl who’s walking away from her. The girl she’s walking away from.

“Bye.” Alyssa’s throat is choking her and she doesn’t trust herself to say another word so she turns and walks away. Out of the kitchen, through the party, and out the door. Her back is straight, her shoulders wide, giving off the illusion of self-assurance. Her face is fixed straight ahead. A soft rain mists down, mixing with the hot tears that have already begun to slip down her cheeks.

The parallels aren’t lost on her, but this time Alyssa knows there’s no going back. There would be no reunion, no prom waiting for them at the end of this. Because there was no them anymore.

There was only a long, lonely flight – a long, lonely night – and a long, lonely life ahead of her.

_i hope you lie, lie, lie, lie  
lie to me_

This is what she can’t forget: the sight of once-sparkling eyes grown dull, the bittersweet taste of a kind lie, the quiet sound of a heart breaking amidst deafening silence.

**Author's Note:**

> thinking about writing a sequel oneshot, potentially with a happy ending, but i'm not sure..  
> what do you think?


End file.
